‘I Will See Thy Face Again No More’
Pharaoh dismisses Moses’s embassy for the last time, and Moses prepares the Israelites for a hasty departure.
Pharaoh dismisses Moses’s embassy for the last time, and Moses prepares the Israelites for a hasty departure.
This post is number 4 in the series The Story of Moses
With every miracle shown to him, Pharaoh’s heart has become harder towards the Israelites, and now he tells Moses that his embassy to Egypt’s court is at an end. Moses accepts the decree, knowing that more much is to come.
AT last, Pharaoh told Moses that he would not see him anymore. ‘You are right,’ replied Moses. For God now brought on Egypt a tenth and most terrible plague, which struck down their firstborn. The Hebrews were unaffected: they had sacrificed lambs and daubed the blood on the doorposts of their houses, so that God’s angel of death would pass over them during the night.*
These wonders again served only to harden Pharaoh’s heart, but his grief-stricken people were now eager to help his Hebrew slaves go free. The Egyptians pressed herds and flocks, clothing and gold on them; and after a hasty meal of unleavened bread and bitter herbs,* eaten standing, the Israelites set out eastwards, men and women, children and beasts, towards the Red Sea, guided by a pillar of cloud that glowed like fire at night.
But Pharaoh put away grief for his firstborn son, gathered his cavalry and his chariots, and rode after the Israelites like the wind.
Next in series: Moses at the Red Sea
For this reason, the festival celebrating the Israelites’ departure from Egypt each Spring is named Passover. According to St John, many centuries later it was as the Passover lambs were being sacrificed that Jesus Christ, the ‘Lamb of God’, died on the cross. See John 19:12-16 and John 1:29.
At Christ’s Last Supper, which he shared with his disciples at Passover time, leavened bread was used – the two different Greek words, azymos for unleavened bread and artos for leavened bread, are unmistakable. This continues to be the practice in the Eastern Churches, which use small round cakes of purest white leavened bread. Rome ordered the exclusive use of unleavened bread in the 9th century, under Frankish influence; the English Prayer Book of 1552 restored leavened bread, under the influence of the Reformation.